We left bright and early on Sunday morning.  I love driving in the early morning hours!  We headed west on the 210, which joins the northbound 5 in Sylmar, just as the climb over the Grapevine/Tejon pass (5,000′ elevation) begins…

It was an easy drive. I set the cruise control to 62 mph and never touched the pedals for two and one half hours.  We stopped for breakfast at the bottom of the hill; there was a large parking lot:

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Tomorrow we begin leading the WBCCI 2018 Wine Tasting Caravan.  We will be spending time at some of our favorite wineries in the Russian River Valley (western Sonoma County), Paso Robles, and the Santa Maria/Santa Ynez Valley.  We will be joined by three other Airstreams.  Our “rendezvous” is tomorrow; more on the caravan later.

After breakfast, we headed up the mighty 5, through the central valley, to Lodi.  We pulled into the vineyards of Jessie’s Grove Winery:

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We parked in their “pasture”; it made a great camping spot for the evening:

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We are staying here due to our membership in “Harvest Hosts”; they find wineries, farms, museums, historical sites, markets, etc., who allow you to camp for free; the gentleman’s agreement is that you spend a little money.  We never shy away from wine tasting, so after getting parked, we wanted over to their grove of oak trees and spent some time (and money) in their tasting room.

After sitting in the car all day, we needed to do a little walking; luckily, there were three more wineries about one mile down the road. We picked one that looked good, and we set out.  It was warm, about 95 degrees, but there was a slight breeze, and it was already cooling off.  We found Lucas Winery, tasted wine, bought a few bottles of a very nice Zinfandel Rose’, and headed back to The Villa…

We enjoyed one bottle of the Zinfandel Rose’ and a few simple snacks and a pizza…  Since we had been on the road since 4:00 am, we turned in early.

And an enjoyable first day was had by all…